# Claudia Karvan - Love, Her Way

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 1 Feb 2026, 1 h 38 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/e8od7s5uzncbqbu97dkhwcf2.mp3

Stop. Everything. Now. It’s Claudia Karvan day. 💌Join 5,000+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy An icon of the screen, and of the heart, Claudia is Australian entertainment royalty. Claudia’s life itself feels like a movie (no one else grew up in a nightclub, did they?) and it was an absolute privilege to listen to all the lessons that she has learnt along the way. With incredible grace, Claudia talks to Hugh, Ryan and Josh about playing the long game during divorce, and how she came to the realisation that it wasn’t up to her to fix everything. Claudia speaks openly about separating the person from the diagnosis, and how, and why, she thinks so often about death. This is one for the highlight reel. If you’d like to watch this full episode on YouTube, click on this link - https://youtu.be/4qH4vBr0i6Y 0:00 – Hugh ‘questionable-decisions’ van Cuylenburg 12:24 – The role of a lifetime 17:55 – An unconventional childhood 28:50 – It’s not up to you to fix everything 39:55 – The opening of another world 45:47 – Doing it all (with support) 51:12 – Love and family HER way 59:33 – Play the long game 1:07:15 – Managing mental ill-health 1:24:39 – The benefit of helping others 1:26:48 – How to love in a healthy way 🥸 Which Imperfects Host Are You Quiz? - https://tally.so/r/Xx4PEO 🫖Other Imperfects episodes mentioned in this episode • Stephen Curry - I Dug a Hole … and Found Myself - https://bit.ly/3ZpPNkN • Hannah Ferguson - Outspoken But Not Broken - https://bit.ly/3M8SC6y 📺 Things to watch • Love My Way - https://bit.ly/4qFCjNA • The Secret Life of Us - https://bit.ly/3Z1Thtt • The Queen of Versailles - https://bit.ly/3Z5FemE • Australian Story - The Secret Life of Claudia Karvan - https://bit.ly/3ZE8p0g • Who Do You Think You Are? with Claudia Karvan - https://bit.ly/4bIw3QL • Bump - https://bit.ly/49O16Jv 📖 Things to read • The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche - https://bit.ly/4k8qdtR 🩷To host your own Vulnerabilitea House, (with the new cards!) purchase here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuWz 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuW 🩵To join our subscriber community, A Little More Imperfects, follow this link - http://bit.ly/4mqunxu 🩷 AND you can subscribe to A Little More Imperfects through Apple Podcasts too, here - http://apple.co/theimperfects The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Royalty alert.
[0:01] Australian entertainment royalty in the room.
[0:03] Claudia was one of the most talented and accomplished creatives in Australia.
[0:07] At 14, Claudia would play opposite Judy Davis in High Tide, which would later be recognised as her breakout role.
[0:13] She did have a child, and I was like, I'm gonna kill that child.
[0:17] She's my mum.
[0:20] How would you describe your childhood?
[0:22] We were all going to private schools and my mum was wearing, you know, isseymiyaki and buying La Prairie and we were, you know, living the high life until it all really came down.
[0:32] My parents were declared bankrupt.
[0:35] My biological dad had schizoaffective disorder and bipolar and extreme narcissism.
[0:41] He thought I sent him insane.
[0:43] I know your brother, you're saying schizophrenic as well.
[0:46] How is it loving someone with their condition of schizophrenia?
[0:51] Rupert is not a problem and I'm not going to try and solve him.
[0:54] All I am going to do is meet him.
[0:56] Yeah.
[0:56] He has two characters, a magician, and then he has a woman called Rebecca Swerfty-Werfty.
[1:04] I understand you've been imagining death.
[1:07] Yeah, not sitting there imagining people crying at your funeral and what music will you play and all this sort of stuff.
[1:11] It was about, okay, if it ended tomorrow, how do you feel?
[1:17] We're all imperfect.
[1:18] And on this podcast, I'll be chatting with a variety of interesting people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable by sharing their own struggles and imperfections.
[1:28] I'm Hugh Van Kylenberg from The Resilience Project.
[1:30] And I'm Ryan Shelton from My Mum.
[1:32] And I'm Josh from Hugh's Mum.
[1:35] And this is The Imperfects.
[1:39] It's a brand new year for the imperfects.
[1:43] It surely is.
[1:44] We are back and we are so excited.
[1:46] I mean, we have been having episodes, but we are back with a very exciting one for you today.
[1:51] Well, yeah.
[1:52] So for those of you who've been listening over summer, we've had a few episodes that have played, I guess, like highlights or our favourite bits from our subscriber-only show, A Little More Imperfects, and you can go listen to them.
[2:02] There's a few episodes of those.
[2:04] But now we are back.
[2:06] for brand new episodes, new guests, and God, have we got some big names this year.
[2:13] They're all great.
[2:13] And today is unbelievable.
[2:15] Claudia Carvin.
[2:16] Claudia Carvin.
[2:17] Wow.
[2:18] It's pretty wild.
[2:20] And often when we get guests like this, you think back to when we first started eight years ago.
[2:23] And it's like, you would never have thought we would have anyone like Claudia Carvin.
[2:28] Is it inappropriate to say, be still my beating heart?
[2:32] It depends on the context.
[2:35] What's following that?
[2:36] In reference to Claudia, just like, be still my beating heart.
[2:39] So hang on.
[2:40] So you're as if you're saying that to her?
[2:42] Just about her.
[2:43] Yeah.
[2:44] So you're just saying in general, with her on your mind, be still my beating heart.
[2:47] So who are you saying it to?
[2:49] To our audience.
[2:50] To the audience.
[2:51] Yeah.
[2:51] Okay.
[2:51] Yeah.
[2:52] No, I'm saying it to my heart, actually.
[2:53] It's not inappropriate.
[2:53] Direct message to my heart.
[2:54] It's more confusing than inappropriate.
[2:59] But anyway, we want to get to the interview as quickly as possible.
[3:03] Yeah.
[3:03] But Josh, every year I get so excited to come in because no doubt you've tinkered with the studio.
[3:09] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[3:10] In some way.
[3:11] And people watching on Spotify or YouTube, you probably noticed the lighting's a bit different.
[3:16] Slightly different.
[3:16] Rather than being a sort of blonde glow behind you, it's now a dappled light, a dappled blonde glow.
[3:23] So it's a pretty big change.
[3:24] I didn't want people to be too...
[3:26] Put off when they came on.
[3:27] Yeah, Hugh's been banging on about a gobo lighting effect for years.
[3:30] Yeah, exactly.
[3:31] And we've got a little bit more gear.
[3:33] We've been buying a bit of stuff.
[3:35] I was on Facebook, Mark.
[3:37] Actually, this is a bit of an in-joke.
[3:38] Maybe I shouldn't.
[3:40] I just realized that...
[3:41] I'll let everyone in.
[3:42] Okay.
[3:42] So I was on Facebook Marketplace today and the first, trying to get some cameras, and I don't know why I was targeted with this, but the first thing that came up is like the first thing I could buy was a big brick pizza oven for free.
[3:57] Wow.
[3:58] Well, I just realized that I probably should have said this off mic because it's not really.
[4:03] No one's going to know why that's funny.
[4:05] No, I'm so glad you brought it up because it's one of my favorite things.
[4:10] If you know Hugh, you know that Hugh makes questionable decisions sometimes and does some strange things.
[4:17] Hugh, please.
[4:18] I know you don't feel like you want to tell this because you'll probably feel like it's unrelatable.
[4:22] But can you please tell the story, your pizza oven story?
[4:26] Not that it's not relatable.
[4:27] I mean, it's not relatable at all.
[4:29] But I thought this year, 2026, I'm not going to – I feel like sometimes I come across as a bit of a buffoon.
[4:36] You think so?
[4:39] I was thinking this morning, New Year, I'm going to come across as – no longer will I be the buffoon.
[4:45] But this is just – I mean, yeah.
[4:48] Can I just say on all of our behalves, please don't stop.
[4:51] Please don't.
[4:52] I think the episodes will be half the length if you quit buffooning.
[4:57] Well, okay.
[4:59] This is the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened to me.
[5:02] We- Start at the beginning.
[5:04] Penny and I had, we don't have it now, but we did have a beach house that we love very much.
[5:09] And I just kept feeling like when we bought it, it just had the most amazing pizza oven you've ever seen.
[5:14] Yep.
[5:14] The size of this room.
[5:16] Outrageous.
[5:17] Unbelievable.
[5:17] I remember when we came over and the team went over to the house to see it for the first month.
[5:22] Whoa.
[5:23] It's like a legit commercial level quality outdoor pizza oven.
[5:27] Yep.
[5:28] In a wonderful spot.
[5:30] We had the place for a couple of years and the whole time I just wanted a sauna.
[5:34] It was like a dream come true.
[5:35] I love a sauna.
[5:36] They're very expensive but I thought, you know what, we're going to get a sauna.
[5:39] And the only place I can really think to put it where it's going to look beautiful looking out across the view is where the pizza oven is.
[5:44] I made the call.
[5:45] And at risk of making this even less relatable, the sauna that you wanted was not off the shelf.
[5:55] Not off the shelf.
[5:56] It was a bespoke.
[5:59] I think it was off the shelf.
[6:00] It was off the shelf.
[6:01] Yeah, it was.
[6:01] But a very high shelf.
[6:03] No.
[6:04] Like maybe the top shelf.
[6:05] No.
[6:07] Medium shelf.
[6:08] I mean, it's dangerous considering how heavy the sauna is to put it on that shelf, but it is top shelf sauna.
[6:14] No, no, not at all.
[6:16] But I made the decision which shocked everyone.
[6:18] I thought, well, do you know what?
[6:19] I think the pizza oven has to go.
[6:20] The only place I can think to put this sauna is exactly where the pizza oven is.
[6:24] It shocked everyone.
[6:24] Yeah, it's a perfect spot, yes.
[6:26] Yeah, there were other spots.
[6:28] There was more space on the block than it wasn't lacked.
[6:32] How big was the block, you?
[6:36] Anyway, I decided.
[6:40] Because, like, I found when I was there, I had to, like, you know, to go to one part of – because there was different elevations of the block.
[6:47] This is ridiculous.
[6:48] When Jam and I were there, we – It's not the story.
[6:51] No, no, no.
[6:51] In order to go down to the bottom of the block, we had to camp overnight to altitude just because of the altitude difference.
[6:58] It's a steep hill.
[6:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[7:00] Anyway.
[7:00] That's not true.
[7:01] But I said, I'm sorry that I have lived here.
[7:05] We've had this place for two years and I haven't used a pizza oven once.
[7:08] I'm never going to use it.
[7:10] Decided to get a quote to get the pizza oven removed.
[7:11] The guy came and said, yeah, it's going to cost $400.
[7:14] It'll take me a few hours.
[7:16] Decided it'd be good to get it done while Josh was there so he could sort of, Josh and his family, so he could just keep an eye on things.
[7:21] Yeah, that's a great idea for your holiday as well, Josh.
[7:23] No, it's good.
[7:24] It's meant to be two or three hours.
[7:25] Yeah.
[7:25] And the guy messaged me and said,
[7:27] I feel like whoever built this, they built it with the idea of putting a skyscraper on the fucking thing.
[7:31] It's going to take me three days.
[7:34] And so it was like Josh drilling.
[7:36] Well, it was jackhammering from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for I think it was four days straight.
[7:42] Beautiful.
[7:42] I've never seen anything built with more steel reinforcement through it than this thing.
[7:47] I mean, it was not meant to be taken down.
[7:49] I believe all the bricks were imported from Italy.
[7:53] That is true.
[7:54] This isn't Hugh.
[7:56] The guy who built it, who owned the house previously, loved pizza.
[8:01] Lovely man.
[8:01] Lovely guy and cared a lot about this oven and imported the bricks for it.
[8:05] Of course, when you build a pizza oven from scratch and you want it for life, you want to make it to the best quality possible.
[8:10] I didn't know that.
[8:11] I didn't know it before it was pulled down.
[8:13] I did.
[8:13] Someone told me that when the previous owner found out he was in tears that it had been pulled down.
[8:17] But anyway, so it takes three days.
[8:20] Finally get rid of it.
[8:20] And I went, right.
[8:22] The sauna, I was like, I can't wait to visit on our holiday.
[8:25] And they said, oh, there's a six-month delay with the sauna.
[8:27] And I'm like, right, okay.
[8:28] So I waited.
[8:29] It ended up being about 10 months.
[8:31] Well, it's going to be quite hard for them to get it off that shelf.
[8:33] Probably half the time is like, how do you crane it off that shelf?
[8:36] It's so hard.
[8:37] We organized something to come and build the sauna.
[8:39] She started and said, it's not level.
[8:41] You need to get this concreted and flattened out so we can build it.
[8:45] Right, okay.
[8:45] Yeah.
[8:46] A lot more money to do that.
[8:48] And then they did that and went to build the sauna.
[8:50] And they said they haven't put enough concrete.
[8:51] It needs to be more.
[8:52] So they'd take down the sauna, put more concrete out, fill the area with concrete.
[8:57] And then they built the sauna.
[8:59] And it went great.
[9:00] In that time, he and I realized that for various reasons, we decided that we would need to sell this place.
[9:06] Okay.
[9:07] And so, which is heartbreaking.
[9:08] The kids were shattered, but we decided to sell the place.
[9:11] After we'd sold it, they finally... Because I think... Because they were going to... Because the person buying it was going to put a new suburb on the block, weren't they?
[9:17] Aren't they planning on developing a whole new...
[9:21] Turning into a full suburb?
[9:22] Is that the plan?
[9:24] Just...
[9:24] I want everyone to know this is like extremely embellished.
[9:26] Yeah.
[9:26] Obviously.
[9:27] Somewhat.
[9:28] Somewhat embellished.
[9:29] No, it's very...
[9:31] Anyway, so I was shattered because I had put...
[9:33] This was like a year of my heart and soul and thought and finances into this sauna and we realised we were selling it and...
[9:40] Basically, the day it sold was the day that they finished the sauna.
[9:44] And I went, well, this is just devastating.
[9:46] And I thought, well, we've sold it, but I can't.
[9:48] It's so much time and effort and money's going to this sauna.
[9:51] I can't sell the sauna with the place.
[9:52] I had to sell the sauna to someone.
[9:54] So I start trying to sell it and it becomes impossible to sell that as well.
[9:59] So the plan is to sell the sauna separately.
[10:03] So then the person buying the home who bought the home with a sauna on it is now not going to have the sauna.
[10:09] Yeah.
[10:09] Well, yeah, I mean, they knew that the sauna wasn't part of the package.
[10:12] Okay, great.
[10:12] Anyway, so that's all.
[10:14] This whole process is taking a year.
[10:16] I didn't get to use the sauna once.
[10:18] And I went, well, look, these things happen.
[10:20] I'm a little bit sad about this, but that's such a life.
[10:22] I'll let go of that.
[10:23] Exactly.
[10:24] And then I thought, well, maybe the new owners love saunas.
[10:27] I don't know.
[10:28] I'll ask.
[10:28] And so I asked the real estate agent and said, hey, just out of curiosity, just wondering, did the new owner, did he comment on the sauna when he saw it?
[10:35] Did he say that looks great?
[10:36] Because maybe he would want to buy the sauna.
[10:38] Yeah.
[10:39] And the new owner's response will go to my grave with me.
[10:45] He said when he saw the sauna, no, not much into saunas.
[10:49] He said, I think I might build a pizza oven and put it there.
[10:53] He said, it looks like the perfect spot for a pizza oven.
[10:56] And you know what?
[10:56] I think I might import the bricks from Italy.
[10:58] I mean, if you really turn the heat up, you could cook a pizza in that sauna.
[11:06] Maybe.
[11:07] Anyway.
[11:08] Okay, let's call you a carbon.
[11:09] What an absolute legend of Australian television show.
[11:15] Screen, film.
[11:16] Screen, every stage.
[11:17] She's the classic reason with this podcast.
[11:19] You look at her and go, well, that's a perfect person.
[11:21] She has gone through a lot throughout her childhood and throughout her adult life.
[11:25] One of the things that she talks about, which is something you hear people reference, but you don't often hear people go into detail with, was her brother and her dad's struggles, mental health struggles.
[11:37] So her dad has schizoaffective disorder and her brother has schizophrenia.
[11:42] And I've never really heard someone talk about it.
[11:45] And the way she has dealt with it or the way that she has learned to accept it was very inspiring to me because I feel like in a very different area of my life and for a different reason, this acceptance is the biggest challenge that I face.
[12:00] And that's actually what I want to talk about when we come back from this episode is the way that we can accept things, let go of things.
[12:08] Because I think many people deal with it, but it's certainly my biggest challenge at the moment.
[12:12] Nice.
[12:12] All right, we'll be back soon, but here's our chat with Claudia Carvin.
[12:24] Royalty alert.
[12:26] We have Australian entertainment royalty in the room.
[12:29] Doesn't happen often, but we do.
[12:32] Yeah.
[12:33] Would you accept that title, Claudia?
[12:35] I think it's happened.
[12:36] Stephen Curry was on.
[12:38] I called him royalty.
[12:39] Well, he was technically a king at some point.
[12:41] That's right.
[12:41] There you go.
[12:42] Yes.
[12:43] Literal royalty.
[12:44] I think you're up there, if not, and I say this with great respect to Steve, above Stephen Curry.
[12:50] In the royalty ranks.
[12:51] He'll be listening to this while he's in the garden.
[12:53] He just chopped a finger off when he heard that.
[12:56] He won't be happy.
[12:58] But he'll agree, but he won't be happy.
[13:00] I love Stephen.
[13:02] He's played my brother.
[13:03] We've played siblings.
[13:04] He's the best.
[13:05] He is, yeah, I mean, this is not about Steve, but I feel like we need to get him back in favour.
[13:12] But he is, I feel like every time I speak to someone about Steve Curry, it's like their face lights up.
[13:18] Yeah, he is universally adored.
[13:20] Yeah.
[13:21] Yeah.
[13:21] I don't have Steve's bio in front of me, just in case I've got Claudia's.
[13:26] We can keep just talking about Steve.
[13:27] Why not?
[13:28] People will go back and listen to the episode.
[13:30] Yeah, true.
[13:31] We'll link it in the show notes.
[13:34] Claudia was one of the most talented and accomplished creatives in Australia.
[13:38] Growing up in Sydney's King's Cross, where her mum and stepdad ran Arthur's Nightclub, Claudia was often the practical presence in an unpredictable world.
[13:46] Familiar with the film world through nightclub patrons, Claudia's first acting role was at 10 years of age.
[13:52] At 14, Claudia would play opposite Judy Davis in High Tide, which would later be recognised as her breakout role.
[13:59] Acting in pivotal Australian projects such as The Secret Life of Us
[14:02] Claudia's career continued to grow as she built credentials as a producer and co-creator with a number of projects, including Love My Way.
[14:10] It was just ridiculously incredible.
[14:13] I mean, they all are.
[14:14] Sorry, I'm not picking just – they all weren't great.
[14:17] Spirited and most recently.
[14:18] When Hugh saw Love My Way.
[14:19] Finally, she did something good.
[14:20] Yeah.
[14:24] And most recently, Bump alongside many others.
[14:26] Claudia has received multiple actor awards, Logie Awards, been inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame, and in 2023 received the Medal of Order of Australia for her contribution to Australian Screen and Television.
[14:38] But perhaps what makes us Australians love Claudia most is not her immense talent, it's her humanity.
[14:43] On screen and off, she reflects something profoundly familiar to us.
[14:47] Grace without pretense, strength without ego and warmth without need for applause.
[14:52] Yeah.
[14:53] Who wrote this?
[14:55] She did.
[14:55] Beautifully written.
[14:58] Thanks.
[14:59] She has shown us that vulnerability can be powerful, intelligence can be kind and authenticity can light up a room more than fame ever could.
[15:06] Yeah.
[15:07] In a world that often feels loud and fleeting, Claudia reminds us of what's real, the quiet dignity of someone who has given her life to telling our stories and in doing so has become a part of all of ours.
[15:20] Oh, thank you so much.
[15:22] So AI didn't write that?
[15:25] It knows you very well.
[15:27] But it's incredible.
[15:29] There's actually one role that you haven't played, but it has been mentioned on the podcast.
[15:37] You might need to put your headphones on for this, actually.
[15:40] Oh, please.
[15:42] So a little while ago on the podcast, we were just having a general chat and you got brought up in an unexpected way.
[15:50] Are there any actors that come to mind who would be playing you in the movie about you?
[15:55] Yeah, the weirdest thing came to my head then, who would like to play me, which I always don't want to say because it's so weird.
[16:00] I'd like you to say... Claudia Carvin.
[16:05] Wow!
[16:08] I'm so glad!
[16:08] Claudia Carvin?
[16:10] I don't know.
[16:11] She's great.
[16:11] Well, it's a...
[16:13] Definitely a stretch for her, but she's a great actress.
[16:16] Who doesn't love Claudia Carvin?
[16:17] She'd be amazing.
[16:18] Is this something you've thought about before?
[16:20] I watched her Australian story the other night, and I just thought, I remember I was on the couch by myself, and I thought, if anyone was like playing my character, it would be her, and I was like, that's not going to happen because it's weird.
[16:31] She's just, something about her face is just so vulnerable and open.
[16:35] Yeah.
[16:36] Not, she looks like me.
[16:38] No, no, I don't think she looks like me.
[16:39] Yeah, okay.
[16:40] Okay.
[16:41] I just thought she seems like I'm the best people of all time.
[16:44] I'd like her to represent me.
[16:45] But anyway, this has got very weird very quickly.
[16:49] So, yeah, so no pressure, Claudia.
[16:51] Obviously, think it over.
[16:52] Speak to your agent.
[16:53] When I met you, I did think you look like someone I know.
[16:57] I know, and now I see it's me.
[17:01] Yeah.
[17:03] It would be, I mean, I would love to see you play anything really, but to play Hugh in his life, assuming you're getting a biopic at some point.
[17:13] I did do a body swap one with Guy Pearce, so I have played a man before.
[17:19] Oh, there you go.
[17:20] And, you know, the life is now everyone, you know, there's a lot of friends beyond the binary, so, you know, what is gender anyway?
[17:27] Exactly.
[17:28] It's absolutely possible.
[17:29] I can do it.
[17:30] Sign me up.
[17:31] I think the biopic is the most outrageous part of this.
[17:33] Hypothetical, to be honest.
[17:35] The fact that that's going to happen.
[17:37] You never know.
[17:38] Wow.
[17:39] Okay.
[17:39] So where do we start?
[17:40] Because I feel like there's so much to talk about with Claudia.
[17:43] I mean, the temptation is to talk the roles you've done and the incredible parts you've played and the TV shows you've been on.
[17:50] But I do feel like for me personally, I just have this immense interest in you as a person.
[17:56] And I feel like to maybe set that up, who you are now would be really helpful to go back in time and to look at your childhood because it's, I remember watching on Australian Story thinking I've never heard of a childhood like that before.
[18:10] Quite a unique experience growing up.
[18:12] How would you describe your childhood?
[18:17] Yeah, there's a quote that I love which goes something like the future is in the past and the past is in the present.
[18:26] Are you familiar with that?
[18:27] Oh, I can.
[18:28] Yeah, that makes sense.
[18:29] Or you can only, life can only be lived forwards but it can only be understood backwards.
[18:35] And when I do think about my childhood, I do see all of the groundwork laid for where I am now.
[18:43] Yeah.
[18:44] Um, my mum is still alive.
[18:47] She's now in assisted care.
[18:49] She's 83.
[18:51] She's pretty sharp though.
[18:51] And she listens to all the podcasts and stuff.
[18:54] Um, and I see her a lot and I love her very much.
[18:57] And my stepdad lives in Bali.
[19:00] But unlike the amazing episode that you did with Hannah Ferguson, I do envy how openly she can talk about everything that happened during her childhood.
[19:12] I feel a little bit more protective of my parents and I haven't.
[19:18] asked for permission to talk about certain things and I don't think they would feel like there's any reason to apologise for anything.
[19:26] So I feel like I'm on different – it's a different playing field.
[19:30] Yeah.
[19:31] So with that in mind, I would say my childhood was –
[19:38] There was volatility, there was drama, very, very social, lots of extraordinary people around, lots of honesty.
[19:49] Like my mother never put a filter on anything.
[19:54] So it's like never, which is a blessing and a curse.
[20:00] You mean in terms of like how she spoke to you as a child?
[20:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[20:04] I remember something she'd just turned to me and, like, tell me some bit of gossip about her 30- or 40-year-old friend, which I looked back and I'm like, totally inappropriate, but sort of great.
[20:13] And I didn't even understand what she was saying at the time.
[20:16] But you remember it 30 years later and you go, oh, that's what she meant.
[20:20] Oh, wow.
[20:21] Juicy bit of gossip.
[20:22] Not please she told me that.
[20:24] Why did she tell a five-year-old?
[20:25] No.
[20:28] Yeah, Susie's trying to quit drinking.
[20:30] You know how hard that is for you.
[20:33] Exactly.
[20:33] But I imagine growing up in a nightclub, there was probably a lot of gossip and a lot of stories to be shared.
[20:41] Yeah.
[20:42] Yeah, well, that started from when I was six, six through to 16.
[20:48] Yeah, and a lot of adult, inebriated adults and colourful drag queens and artists and rock stars.
[20:57] And, I mean, I was only thinking the other day, I vividly remember all of us hiding in the nightclub and our friend was bringing in Brian Brown and we were like, shh, shh.
[21:11] And they're like, surprise!
[21:12] And I can't do the maths on it, but maybe it was his 30th or something like that.
[21:18] And I would have been about 10.
[21:19] Wow.
[21:20] So it's, you know, people, that sort of, you know, fashion designers and, you know, people that were very, very successful.
[21:30] And other people who had, you know, the 80s was a time of excess.
[21:34] So I was watching a lot of excess, a lot of money, a lot of recreational drugs, a lot of high fashion and people, you know, bottoming out as well during that time.
[21:48] Did you live at the nightclub or just nearby?
[21:52] We lived in about six different houses all along that street, Victoria Street.
[21:59] So it's now, if anyone knows Potts Point, Kings Cross, the current establishment is called Miss G's.
[22:05] It's a really popular restaurant.
[22:07] So that's it.
[22:08] Oh, I know.
[22:10] Yeah, so my parents bought that property when I was about six and it was just a boarded up old completely gutted property
[22:21] you know, building with people sleeping rough, people squatting in there, no floors.
[22:26] And so completely built it from scratch.
[22:28] And a beautiful design and a lot of creativity and thought went into that.
[22:33] And us kids would help, you know, paint the dots on the walls and stuff.
[22:37] It was a really beautiful time.
[22:40] And, yeah, it opened in 1978, I think.
[22:45] But they never actually had a licence to run a nightclub.
[22:49] They only had a licence to run a restaurant.
[22:52] So they just, they broke, they breached the licence time and time and time and time again until they lost the licence.
[22:58] There was a sort of a whole lot of, like pubs had licences to serve alcohol.
[23:02] There was a sort of a monopoly over, very different to Victoria, the New South Wales story.
[23:07] So, yeah, they ended up losing that licence and things sort of changed a lot for our family when I was about 16.
[23:14] So that excess radically changed during the recession that we had to have, the Paul Keating recession where interest rates went up to 17%.
[23:27] What year was that?
[23:29] So I think I was in about year 11 or year, it was like 1987, 1988.
[23:35] And so our whole family, yeah, it was a massive change.
[23:41] And I guess like because you were, it sounds like, pretty in on all the adult conversations, you probably, I don't know, did you feel that fear?
[23:50] Were you sort of privy to everything that was going on, like the struggle?
[23:54] I think now having had teenagers myself, it's amazing how much you can say in front of them, but the very nature of being a teenager is you are so self-absorbed and you're supposed to be.
[24:06] And I was too.
[24:07] So a lot of it was going on around me and I didn't really appreciate it until it all really, the house of cards came down.
[24:15] And then, ironically, we had probably the most beautiful phase of our family life because my parents were declared bankrupt and we were all going to private schools and my mum was wearing, you know, isimiyaki and buying La Prairie and we were, you know, living the high life.
[24:35] And then we were, you know, renting a cottage in the bush and growing organic garlic and free-range chickens and cleaning eggs and selling eggs and trying to get by.
[24:49] But it was a beautiful time.
[24:51] I literally physically made...
[24:54] a house with my dad and my brothers.
[24:56] Every day we would put the trailer on the back of the Holden Commodore, drive it down to the creek, fill it up with sand, go to the dam and fill it up with clay, straw.
[25:08] And we made a hundred mud bricks a day together, baked them in the sun and built a little mud brick house, which is where my parents...
[25:17] lived for a period of time.
[25:19] Wow.
[25:20] Yeah, that was rad.
[25:21] It was such a beautiful time.
[25:24] And did that, because the fact, at the time, did you think it was great or is it in reflection you think it's beautiful?
[25:31] No, at the time it was genuinely beautiful.
[25:34] Wow.
[25:34] Because we really consolidated as a family.
[25:37] And Arthur, my stepdad, is an amazing cook.
[25:42] So we would just hit a garden and we'd cook beautiful meals together and go for bushwalks and just really appreciated nature in a way that, I mean, we sort of always did with my real dad.
[25:54] I was in the bush with him a lot and we spent a year in Bali.
[25:57] So wonderful.
[25:58] We're very, you know, into being out of King's Cross.
[26:03] But this was a real, it was a really healing, beautiful time.
[26:08] So it reminds me, have you seen a documentary called Queen of Versailles?
[26:13] Do you remember that documentary?
[26:14] No, who's that about?
[26:16] It's like a, it's an American doco.
[26:18] I think it was a big doco, maybe like 15, 10, 15 years ago.
[26:21] But essentially it's about the richest family in America.
[26:26] And they were building the biggest house in America and like the richest people, whatever.
[26:31] It was like a documentary about that.
[26:32] But as they were filming, the financial crisis hits while they're filming and they lose everything.
[26:40] And they...
[26:41] The film starts off with the wife showing the crew like, this is my room where I keep my shoes and this is my... And it's the most...
[26:49] The excess is astonishing.
[26:52] They're making a documentary about it.
[26:53] That's how astonishing it is.
[26:55] But then when the financial crisis hits and the cameras are filming them, realise that they're losing everything and you're seeing it happen and he panics and he's not really on camera that much, but he's having a meltdown.
[27:07] But the wife, she handles it in the most inspiring way and really takes control of the situation and shows the kids that this is going to be okay.
[27:19] And it's really amazing to see someone pivot like that and deal with news which you would assume is going to ruin her because you think that she's so attached to the wealth, but then to see the fact that actually she doesn't actually need it.
[27:34] That reminds me of this amazing moment where they were interviewing, it was one of the big bushfires maybe 15, 20 years ago.
[27:42] They were interviewing this man in the Blue Mountains who was a book collector and he had this incredible library and he had accumulated so many rare, beautiful books that he actually had to build a little library for them and it was this circular sort of turret thing with layers and layers and layers, you know, floors and floors of books.
[28:03] And they said to him, how did you feel when you were looking at this tower of all your books just burning down in front of you?
[28:13] And he said...
[28:16] Whoa.
[28:17] Wow.
[28:17] I get it.
[28:19] I was like, that just hit me in the solar plexus.
[28:22] I was like, that is a message to take away.
[28:25] Yeah.
[28:26] I got chills.
[28:26] The house I live in, I have very, very little storage space.
[28:30] And I had some friends who were thinking they might buy the house as well.
[28:34] But it's got no storage.
[28:35] They're like, thank God.
[28:36] I don't want storage.
[28:38] I don't want an excuse to accumulate stuff and store stuff that I probably don't need.
[28:43] That's an amazing response.
[28:45] Yeah.
[28:46] Wow.
[28:46] Isn't that beautiful?
[28:47] It is.
[28:48] Yeah, I love that.
[28:50] You said before you mentioned your stepdad and then you quickly corrected and called him dad.
[28:55] And I was just wondering, so the nightclub that was your stepdad, yeah, okay.
[29:01] Look, it's a real sore point in my family and it is sad.
[29:05] My biological dad has passed away now.
[29:09] But I was born Claudia Robbins, so I had his name, but my parents had already split.
[29:17] And then for various different reasons, I haven't interrogated my mother about this and I don't really want to, but she changed our names to her new partner's name, which...
[29:29] Would not have helped my father at all.
[29:32] Don't advise anyone listening.
[29:34] Don't advise you do that.
[29:36] And then also you as a child.
[29:40] carry that, like he, I think he was always disappointed in me that I didn't change my name back.
[29:47] But by the age of, by the time I'm conscious of something like that, which is 19, 20, 21, 22, I've got a career.
[29:54] I have my own name.
[29:55] I'm not going to change my name back to make him feel like I'm a part of him.
[30:00] Yeah.
[30:01] But that is the sort of scenario.
[30:03] So, and then it's tricky because I've always called Arthur dad and I always called my biological dad Peter.
[30:09] It's just this horrible mess that you inherit as a child.
[30:14] And, you know, at some point you've got to go, well, I didn't create this.
[30:18] I'm just going to navigate it as best I can and not, yeah, take it on and feel responsibility for that.
[30:28] That's a tough thing to get to though, I imagine.
[30:30] That kind of like getting to a point of being, I don't know if the word is okay, but saying exactly what you said, that this isn't my, I didn't create this situation so I shouldn't hold the blame for it.
[30:44] Yeah, I just have to wholesale give credit to, I went to a psychologist way too late in life, like probably around 42.
[30:52] And yeah, her giving me the permission to sort of understand that sort of stuff.
[30:59] But yeah.
[31:00] to know when to go, draw that boundary and go, well, it's not up to me to fix everything.
[31:06] Up until then I think I, well, I know I truly believed it's my responsibility to fix everything.
[31:15] Really stupid way to think.
[31:17] Move through the world but somehow it's sort of...
[31:19] But when you realise you don't have to, that's more relief.
[31:24] Sort of.
[31:25] Well, it becomes a pattern of thinking and there is still a part in your brain that goes, actually, you're really selfish for not taking out that time to fix that problem that you can fix.
[31:35] You are in the position you can fix it.
[31:38] Why aren't you fixing it?
[31:38] There's still that voice.
[31:40] You have to have a chat to that person.
[31:42] So was your biological dad, Petey, was he in your life when you were growing up?
[31:48] Look, that was one of the many elements of volatility.
[31:52] He was given us by the courts and then my mum kidnapped us back a couple of times and then the judge, the family law court judge who gave us to Peter, there was a whole lot of, I don't know if you're familiar with this, they bombed and killed and lots of, there was a lot of, I think there's going to be a documentary made about it,
[32:17] That judge was bombed.
[32:19] The house was bombed and it wasn't my mum.
[32:21] It wasn't my mum, but...
[32:23] Okay, that's good to put that on the record.
[32:25] Might have been some other angry parent.
[32:27] Then so the case was reheard and then we were given to my mum.
[32:35] And my dad was given access one weekend a month.
[32:37] Okay.
[32:38] And I was, I very, very reluctantly went on those weekends and didn't want to be there and then didn't go for quite a period of time.
[32:48] But then eventually, I think when I was about eight or nine, I started working.
[32:52] wanting to spend weekends with him in the bush.
[32:55] So that would have been very painful for my dad.
[32:57] Now I know as a parent it must have been awful, but I just didn't know him very well, didn't want to be around him, understood that there was a lot of conflict and didn't want a bar of it.
[33:11] It's...
[33:12] one hell of a thing to go through as a child.
[33:14] Like I had my kids around that age now between eight and three and I just think about the smallest little disruptions to their day.
[33:20] I get a little bit worried about, a bit stressed about the impact it's going to have.
[33:23] But when I think about that, being sent somewhere you don't want to go for a weekend feels like eternity.
[33:30] Do you remember what it was?
[33:33] Was it the situation or was it him?
[33:35] What was it that made you just think this doesn't feel right?
[33:37] Yeah.
[33:38] Look, to be honest, I only remember one situation where he had to sort of drag me up the stairs, bawling, like screaming, crying, not wanting to go.
[33:45] But then I think once I got there, like a lot of, I think kids are pretty adaptable really.
[33:53] And I think once I was there, I probably had a really lovely time.
[33:57] I loved the bush.
[33:58] I loved the property that he built, the rivers and the...
[34:02] He created an incredible place for us.
[34:06] He built this beautiful big sandstone house.
[34:10] So he built a house too?
[34:11] Yes, he did.
[34:12] He was a builder.
[34:13] He was a builder, yeah.
[34:15] Yeah, he had motorbikes and horses and it was stunning.
[34:19] It was a beautiful place.
[34:20] And once I sort of, I don't know, our relationship sort of recovered a little bit.
[34:29] He was always very British though, just very sort of.
[34:33] He was sent to boarding school when he was like four years old.
[34:36] Right.
[34:36] Okay.
[34:37] And he had schizoaffective disorder and bipolar.
[34:41] So possibly I just felt a bit of that maybe.
[34:45] I don't know.
[34:46] What's schizoaffective disorder?
[34:49] I don't know, I've just read it in all his medical notes after he died.
[34:52] But is it like schizophrenia?
[34:54] I suppose so.
[34:55] I actually don't know.
[34:56] Right, okay.
[34:57] But bipolar and extreme narcissism.
[35:01] Right, okay.
[35:02] Wow.
[35:02] So there was a lot going on for him, but also he managed to have friends and have a...
[35:11] life and really genuinely loved his kids and loved kids in general, just loved being a parent, but had these other psychological hurdles that he was obviously wrestling with and they got the better of him when I was about 16, maybe 15, I remember.
[35:31] We would go there a lot.
[35:36] And sadly, you know, when you become a teenager, you have your own life and you stop wanting to go to your dad's property in the bush.
[35:44] And of course, that was all about him, not about, oh, great, my kids got a social life and they're doing stuff.
[35:50] So that was another point of conflict.
[35:53] And then...
[35:55] I remember going there just with my brother and we arrived and he opened up the power box and he started going on this rave about, you know, I don't know if it was the aliens or something.
[36:06] Someone was playing around with his...
[36:09] electrical block.
[36:10] And I just knew, I was like maybe 15 or 16, I was like, no one is playing around with this.
[36:16] There's something odd going on there.
[36:18] And that's when he started.
[36:19] He went into a complete decline and ended up in psychiatric institutes on and off for years.
[36:27] And like,
[36:29] Yeah, to the point where I was at school one day and over the tannoy, the principal was like, Claudia Carvin, can you please come to the principal's office?
[36:37] I'm like, oh, God, going to the principal's office.
[36:40] And she said, oh, hi, Claudia, I've got missing persons on the phone.
[36:44] They just need to talk to you.
[36:45] Can you just tell them that you're not missing?
[36:47] Oh, wow.
[36:48] Wow.
[36:50] oh, yeah, I'm just at school, I'm fine, I'm not missing.
[36:53] And it was my dad, you know, that was his way of.
[36:57] Did you know that immediately?
[36:59] Yeah, because I'd been receiving lots of packages, a dress.
[37:03] He thought that I was Princess Anne.
[37:07] I was given a, there I am, I'm royalty.
[37:10] I actually am royalty.
[37:11] I knew it felt right.
[37:12] It's come full circle.
[37:15] My brother was a duke and I think I was a duchess of something.
[37:18] And my dad was the regent of Sydney.
[37:24] So it was really off the charts sort of.
[37:27] Was that to you, like, did it feel sad to you that this was happening or was it...
[37:32] Well, I have to just call on that same thing when you're a teenager.
[37:35] You're so involved in your own world and your own projects and your friends.
[37:39] And it's a good thing as a teenager that you are this self-sufficient bubble.
[37:44] So, no, I thought it was just bizarre and kind of interesting.
[37:49] I'm sad to say it.
[37:50] I didn't feel sort of empathy.
[37:53] I really didn't.
[37:54] I just was a self-absorbed teenager and I found it...
[37:58] I found it very creative.
[37:59] I was very impressed with how creative he was and what a writer he was.
[38:05] He would write pages and pages and pages of stuff.
[38:10] What was your relationship with your siblings like throughout this time, throughout childhood?
[38:15] My brother, he went to a Steiner school.
[38:18] And I think the best way to describe my brother, I love, the Steiner education was terrific for him, really worked.
[38:25] And they had these, it was very alternative, Steiner.
[38:28] And his school report, I'll never forget because I was at a like a,
[38:33] Girls' private school, Anglican.
[38:35] The opposite.
[38:36] The opposite.
[38:37] The opposite end of the spectrum.
[38:39] And his report card was a beautiful drawing of a house and a poem.
[38:45] And the poem were words to the effect of, Rupert, you are a beautiful house with windows and no door.
[38:55] That's the report card?
[38:57] That was my brother's report card.
[39:01] So you ask how was I getting on with my siblings?
[39:06] I mean, Rupert has always been like an angel, these curly locks and quite quiet, introverted, shy, but really ready to laugh.
[39:18] Like just always hung out with everyone, played games, didn't say a lot, but laughed a lot.
[39:25] So just a beautiful energy.
[39:27] But...
[39:28] You know, not a lot more, you know, conversation or things going on other than that, that he's just adorable.
[39:37] And my younger brother, Paris, was a lot more fierier and he's Arthur's son.
[39:42] So, yeah.
[39:43] And he was just my younger brother, like, you know, a brat, basically.
[39:52] Yeah.
[39:53] Wow.
[39:54] And so with your, I'm guessing acting comes around about this time, obviously, when your breakout role was when you were 14, is that right?
[40:02] Yeah.
[40:02] Well, I did get a feature film, a lead in a kid's film when I was 10.
[40:07] Yes.
[40:08] About the singing dog with the Flying Fruit Fly Circus and with Gary McDonald and the singing dog and that was just charmed.
[40:16] And I do feel like I was very lucky to...
[40:20] have this other world open up because the family life and the nightclub was a lot, I think, on maybe my nervous system or whatever.
[40:29] It was really quite nice to, back in that day, you didn't have tutors on set.
[40:34] You didn't have, I didn't have an escort or anything like that.
[40:37] I just was treated like an adult and I was 10 years old.
[40:40] And I remember going to work, it was dark.
[40:43] I'd come home at night, it was dark.
[40:44] Yeah.
[40:45] And I just inherited this whole new family, which was this incredible creative ecosystem, you know, what a film set is.
[40:55] Wow.
[40:56] And I absorbed all that and loved it.
[40:59] And I still remember the night we wrapped –
[41:04] And I don't remember crying with anyone or getting any hugs or anything.
[41:07] I just remember walking down the street just inconsolable sobbing because it was ending.
[41:14] Yeah.
[41:14] And then I didn't act again for another four years, but the connection was made then.
[41:19] And then I did a film with Phil Noyce where I played Wendy Hughes' daughter, I think, when I was about 13.
[41:25] But then, yeah, it was Judy Davis and...
[41:27] Gillian Armstrong and Laura Jones wrote the script.
[41:30] Sandra Levy was the producer.
[41:33] It was an extraordinary, another amazing experience where I was away from home seven weeks just living on my own, you know, terms.
[41:42] I had a tutor and an escort at that stage.
[41:44] Yeah.
[41:45] But a way – I do – I'm really, really appreciative of my mum that she didn't try and insert herself into that world.
[41:54] She felt very sad and disappointed that I became a child actor at 10, which I think – Really?
[42:01] Oh, I totally understand that.
[42:03] That must have been really shocking because –
[42:06] And I don't think she was a part of me doing that audition or that opportunity coming up.
[42:12] It's very different to the way things are today.
[42:14] How did it come up, that first opportunity?
[42:16] Oh, it was just all producers who lived and, you know, came to the nightclub.
[42:21] One of the producers, Richard Brennan, a wonderful producer, he also produced Newsfront, one of the most starstruck, beautiful man.
[42:27] He was my best friend's dad.
[42:29] Yeah.
[42:31] And so it would have just been a sort of very casual thing that came around.
[42:35] No one would have taken it very seriously.
[42:37] And my mum often says, I remember...
[42:40] when you came out of that audition room and you went, I got the job, and her heart just sank because she's never a stage mum.
[42:48] And so to her credit, she just let me do that and didn't try and control it, didn't try and insert herself.
[42:55] And so I had this other whole bubble that was all my own.
[42:59] And you loved that?
[43:01] I loved it.
[43:02] Yeah, okay.
[43:02] Awesome.
[43:03] I loved it, yeah.
[43:05] Did you immediately feel like you belonged to that?
[43:08] I think so, yeah.
[43:12] I just loved it.
[43:13] They're very playful adults who work on sets.
[43:16] It's a childlike.
[43:18] Yeah, they're really fun and they were just so lovely to me and they're like your friends.
[43:25] No, I felt very, very – I mean I was having probably way too much fun.
[43:29] Like when I was 10 I would have the giggles.
[43:33] I often – up until –
[43:35] probably my mid-twenties, one of my biggest problems was corpsing.
[43:39] Breaking, yeah.
[43:40] Just not being able to stop laughing.
[43:41] It's the greatest feeling.
[43:43] It's the best feeling.
[43:44] Oh, my God.
[43:45] You're just laughing.
[43:46] You just can't stop laughing.
[43:49] And so I had no motivation to stop laughing because I'm just like, this is just so much fun.
[43:53] But, you know, you're sending a whole crew into overtime by about an hour.
[43:57] I was having too much fun.
[44:00] It's some of my favourite because, I mean, everyone knows, even if you haven't been in a film set, it's like the laughing in church sort of thing.
[44:05] Yeah.
[44:06] But, yeah, on a set when you've got a whole crew looking at you and it's funny the first time, maybe the second, but then as it starts costing time, no one's finding it funny and then it just becomes funnier.
[44:18] No, I've been there.
[44:21] It's beautiful.
[44:22] It's such a beautiful feeling.
[44:24] It is.
[44:24] You cannot recreate it.
[44:26] It's incredible.
[44:28] Yeah.
[44:30] Can I ask you about what we're calling the breakout role?
[44:33] So, it sounded like an incredible group of women to be working with there.
[44:39] And I could be guessing here, but I'm guessing that that's pretty rare at that time to have that many women, so director, producer, in such powerful positions.
[44:49] How did that shape you as a young woman yourself, being exposed to that environment and seeing these sort of role models?
[44:56] I don't know if that's the right word.
[44:57] Well, I guess it became hard for me to recognise that there was a problem.
[45:02] In the industry, because anecdotally what I was saying was there's no problem here.
[45:07] I don't understand.
[45:08] So it took a while for me to meet the leaders in the industry, look at the data and recognise that there was a problem.
[45:18] Because then I worked with Nadia Tass on The Big Steel who wrote and directed that and Megan Simpson-Huberman directed Date in the Enemy.
[45:27] For some reason, female directors hired me a lot.
[45:31] Yeah.
[45:31] Okay.
[45:31] So when people talk to you about it, you're like, don't, I think you were actually wrong there.
[45:35] I think we're pretty equal.
[45:40] It took a little while.
[45:41] Yeah.
[45:41] Yeah.
[45:42] I mean, now I totally see it.
[45:44] Yeah.
[45:45] Yeah.
[45:45] Very much so.
[45:47] So how old were you when The Secret Life of Us came around?
[45:51] I was 28, I think.
[45:53] Yeah.
[45:55] All right.
[45:56] Was that a great experience?
[45:58] Yeah.
[46:01] Well, it was nerve-wracking because I'd done a TV series when I was in year 11 and it was really poorly received.
[46:08] So it was really hard to sign up to something and you have to take that leap of faith because you're going to be committed for about three to six months.
[46:16] So I was a bit nervous about...
[46:19] doing long-form television.
[46:21] It was 22 episodes, one hour an episode.
[46:24] So it's unheard of.
[46:27] It's just an unheard of format.
[46:28] That was the norm though back then, yeah.
[46:31] So I was, no, I was pretty nervous.
[46:34] And we did the pilot and then they ordered it.
[46:41] And everyone was fantastic working with Samuel Johnson, amazing Sam Johnson.
[46:46] Deborah Malman's scripts were great.
[46:48] I love my character.
[46:51] Got an enormous amount of recognition.
[46:55] Like up until then I thought I was a sort of successful actor, but when you actually...
[47:03] see that people are watching what you're doing, then it's a different sort of successful actor vibe.
[47:08] But I did do something quite cheeky on Sacred Life of Us, which was the minute I got that contract and Justine Clark, one of my best friends, had written me a letter, said, you told me to tell you when I would start to try and have children and I'm telling you now.
[47:24] And I was like,
[47:28] oh, God, I probably will want to be a mum one day and I don't want to do it on my own, so I probably should do it now, even though maybe I don't even know if I'm ready, but I should just do it.
[47:35] And then I started lobbying my other best friend, Catherine McClements, like, you've got to have a baby now too.
[47:40] We've all got to do it together.
[47:43] And I've got this contract.
[47:45] So as an actor, you're like, you're worried that if you get pregnant, one, you won't work for about nine months, then you've got the baby, and then you may never work again.
[47:55] That's just the way you think.
[47:57] So I was like, great, I've got this contract for eight months.
[47:59] I'm getting pregnant.
[48:04] which was very naughty.
[48:07] Did you feel the need to tell anyone that you were trying to have kids at that point or was it just one of those things?
[48:13] Like my agent or the producers?
[48:15] Not at all.
[48:16] I wasn't going to declare it at all.
[48:19] And so we used to have the script read-throughs for every block and finally we got to one read-through and I had to run out twice and vomit.
[48:28] Yeah.
[48:30] And then everyone left the read-through.
[48:34] There's about 30 of us there.
[48:36] And John Edwards, the producer, said, do you mind, Claudia, do you mind just staying behind and have a chat?
[48:42] I was like, oh, shit.
[48:44] I noticed you didn't like the script at a couple of points.
[48:46] In fact, you hated it so much, you ran out and spewed.
[48:51] He said, are you pregnant?
[48:52] I went, what would give you that idea?
[48:57] And he said, well, if you are pregnant, this is a great job to have, to be a parent and to have a family.
[49:07] This is a great career and a great job.
[49:09] And he just was magnificent.
[49:11] That's amazing.
[49:12] It was, I am eternally grateful to John for that because I was so scared.
[49:18] But that was beautiful.
[49:20] I will always be grateful to John for that.
[49:23] And they supported me through the whole pregnancy.
[49:25] And then I did Secret Life of Us Series 2 breastfeeding all the way through
[49:31] So I just was having a very different experience to everyone else on Secret Life of Us.
[49:37] A very different experience to your character, I imagine, on Secret Life of Us.
[49:41] Oh, yeah, I think one of my first storylines was I was having an abortion in the first couple of episodes and they were so sweet.
[49:48] They rang and was like, are you going to be all right with this storyline?
[49:50] You know, you're breastfeeding a baby and you're having this abortion story.
[49:53] And I was like, yeah, it's fine, of course, it's fine.
[49:55] Wow, wow.
[49:56] Did you ever go over to Hollywood or LA or want to go over there and try and like make it, so to speak, you know, over there?
[50:06] I never really wanted to, but it was just the thing to do.
[50:11] It was the general pathway.
[50:13] That's what everyone was doing.
[50:14] So it was sort of par for the course and I really did not like it.
[50:21] Probably would have been like, excuse me, where are all the female directors?
[50:25] We've got heaps of them in Australia, but I can't see where they are here.
[50:30] Yeah.
[50:31] Yeah, I just wasn't in my comfort zone.
[50:33] I didn't feel, I just didn't have the strength to deal with that sort of environment.
[50:39] And hats off to all the other extraordinary Australian actors who did manage to do.
[50:45] do that like wow amazing brave but when i think about me as a person i feel like my career and me as an actor is like 10 of who i am and when you're in a place like la i just felt like well 10 of me is here but 90 of me is just gone i don't even know where she is and where how would she survive here yeah
[51:11] That insight into yourself I think is so incredibly wise.
[51:16] Is that something that you have always had or is that something that you've sort of recognized as you've gotten older, that kind of awareness of who you are and what matters to you?
[51:27] Look, I often come back to Judy Davis.
[51:29] I bang on about her a lot.
[51:31] She must get so sick.
[51:32] Her ears must be burning.
[51:34] I was like that bloody child actor that I played a mother back in fricking 1986 where she stopped banging on about me.
[51:44] She did have a child and I was like, I'm going to kill that child.
[51:48] She's my mum.
[51:52] It's so embarrassing to admit, but I used to sit in my bedroom and go, I would just fantasise maybe my parents would die in a car accident and Judy Davis will adopt me.
[52:04] Whoa.
[52:04] That's how much I loved her.
[52:07] Wow.
[52:08] So I can only give her credit for that.
[52:12] I sort of downloaded that because that's her approach.
[52:15] Yeah, wow.
[52:16] She is so much more about...
[52:19] Her life, her ethics, who she is and the industry is what it is, but she is her own person.
[52:29] And, yeah, I got a lot from her, but that's one of the things that…
[52:36] Yeah.
[52:36] That's such a healthy way to approach it.
[52:39] Incredible.
[52:41] You mentioned before we started recording, and I'm going a bit out of order here, sorry.
[52:44] So I'm going back to when you were 22, you became a step-mom.
[52:49] I've got so many questions about that, what that must have been like for a 22-year-old.
[52:54] And also, I wonder if that has an impact on your...
[52:58] on keeping work and industry in a certain place because that is such a life-broadening thing to experience.
[53:06] Yeah.
[53:07] Yeah, huge, huge.
[53:09] So the TV show that I was referring to that I did in year 11 was called The Last Resort, appropriately.
[53:17] ABC TV show that totally tanked.
[53:20] But I met my bestest girlfriend, Loanne Carmen, and we became best friends.
[53:25] We moved in together.
[53:27] And when she was about a year older than me, when I was 18, she said, oh, I'm going to try to get pregnant.
[53:34] And I was like, oh, my God, I really hope she doesn't get pregnant.
[53:36] This is crazy.
[53:38] Anyway, she got pregnant.
[53:41] And I went to a lot of her birthing classes together.
[53:46] I lived with her.
[53:48] I was her support person through the birth.
[53:52] Jez, who then went – this is a really bizarre story.
[53:54] It sounds really bizarre.
[53:55] It wasn't bizarre.
[53:56] It sounds bizarre.
[53:58] Yeah.
[53:59] Jez, who then became my partner, whatever it was, six years later or something, he bought a motorbike.
[54:04] I put a baby bolt in my car.
[54:06] So I would drive Loween around with my goddaughter and I was at the birth and everything.
[54:14] Then, you know, maybe because he bought a motorbike, she fell in love with someone else and their relationship broke down when Holiday was two years old.
[54:27] And then about two years later, Jez and I, bizarrely, I could never have predicted that, we connected.
[54:35] And so I became the stepmother of my goddaughter.
[54:38] Oh, wow.
[54:39] Whoa.
[54:39] Okay.
[54:40] It's pretty weird.
[54:41] I mean, sadly, like this is over 30 years ago, 35 years ago now.
[54:47] Sadly, I heard through some rumour mill, someone said, oh, Claudia,
[54:52] she stole her best friend's boyfriend.
[54:55] I'm like, oh, my God, that's like one of the most beautiful stories of my life.
[54:59] And that's where Love My Way came from was that –
[55:04] I was still close to Lowen and Lowen's girlfriend and we all shared holiday very harmoniously and we'd go on holidays together and I did not steal my best friend's boyfriend.
[55:15] Like he was heartbroken and devastated and it was two years later.
[55:19] But anyway, that's just boring gossip.
[55:22] But yeah, it is.
[55:24] It is.
[55:24] And that's where Love My Way came from because what I believe we were doing,
[55:31] was the absolute opposite to where I had come from with all the bitterness and the conflict that was happening with my biological father and my stepfather and my mother.
[55:46] Within one generation, it was the opposite end of the spectrum.
[55:50] So I felt really proud of that, all very proud that we were able to do that.
[55:55] And that sounds like it was a very conscious thing, but I don't want to repeat this situation.
[56:00] Yeah.
[56:00] Very.
[56:01] Wow, that's incredible to be able to not only think that but enact that at 22.
[56:06] That's remarkable.
[56:07] Yeah, that's the thing, I've got to keep remembering.
[56:09] You're 22.
[56:09] Yeah.
[56:10] That's wild.
[56:11] Yeah.
[56:13] Yeah, and then therapy 20 years later.
[56:14] So I won't unpick that on air, but yeah, there's stuff to unpick there for sure.
[56:20] Jeez, your therapist, that first couple of sessions where they're hearing all the stories like, wow, this is, let's book you in for the next year.
[56:29] Oh, she was wonderful, actually, because she would often go, well, you seem pretty good.
[56:34] I don't think you don't need to see me, do you?
[56:36] Like maybe just call if you're, you know, I wouldn't actually see her that often because I, anyway, she was great.
[56:42] I just saw her for 10 years.
[56:44] What made you want to see a psychologist?
[56:48] Wow, I'm going to be very honest here.
[56:52] I was with my GP.
[56:53] I love my GP.
[56:54] I've had the best GP ever.
[56:56] I really recommend anyone listening having a regular, fantastic, brilliant GP.
[57:01] Find that person because they are an asset in your life.
[57:06] And I was just bawling her eyes out about my relationship.
[57:09] And I just said, I just don't think I can do this anymore.
[57:12] I'm really unhappy.
[57:14] And she said, I think you're getting depressed.
[57:17] I would have been, yeah, 42.
[57:20] And you need to see a relationship counsellor.
[57:22] So Jez and I went to see a relationship counsellor who became my psychologist.
[57:28] And then four years later, we parted ways.
[57:31] We separated, Jez and I.
[57:33] But yeah, it was four years before that that I was like, oh.
[57:36] I can't do it.
[57:37] Wow.
[57:38] So she initially was helping with our relationship and then just generally, you know, childhood patterning and all that sort of stuff, which was all brand new to me.
[57:50] And now it's like just so obvious what you learn from childhood and what you then take from your childhood and bring to your intimate relationships.
[57:59] Yeah.
[58:00] Did you learn a lot about yourself through the process of relationship counselling?
[58:04] Yeah, well, then it became just one-on-one.
[58:07] Yes, very much so.
[58:11] There's a great quote by Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher, French philosopher.
[58:18] Where's my cigar?
[58:20] Which is, we are our choices.
[58:23] Which I would like to have tattooed on my, I don't have a tattoo, but if I tattooed something, I think that's what I learned is that every choice you make, every even tiny choices is who you are.
[58:37] And I think before I went to see a psychologist, I didn't believe I had any choices.
[58:44] I really didn't own that.
[58:49] In the sense that you just thought life was just happening to you.
[58:52] No, I thought I had to do things.
[58:54] Oh, I have to do that.
[58:55] I don't have a choice.
[58:57] I have to do that.
[58:58] That has to happen.
[58:59] Then you go, no, no, you do have a choice.
[59:01] Oh, I see.
[59:02] You can say no.
[59:03] Yes.
[59:04] And if you are choosing to do that, then you have to be aware that that is what you're choosing to do.
[59:09] Even if you're choosing to think that you have to do that.
[59:13] is a choice.
[59:14] Yeah.
[59:14] Oh, fascinating.
[59:15] To try to save the way.
[59:16] Yeah, yeah.
[59:18] It's a game changer.
[59:19] I love it.
[59:20] And also, like, I've said it to my children from when they were teenagers.
[59:26] I tried it out on my daughter.
[59:27] And I was like, we are our choice.
[59:28] And she was like.
[59:29] Oh, wow.
[59:30] Oh, yeah.
[59:30] She took to him.
[59:31] He's like, oh, yeah.
[59:32] All right.
[59:32] Yeah, so if I do this, if I choose to do that, oh, yeah, that's me.
[59:35] Well, that's me.
[59:37] She loved it.
[59:38] I ran it past my son and he has taken that to heart.
[59:43] All his choices, he knows that that's his responsibility.
[59:46] He's there because he made a choice, whatever he's doing at that time.
[59:49] How old are you now?
[59:50] He's 19.
[59:50] 19 now.
[59:51] Wow.
[59:52] I read that Jez subsequently said that it took your emotional awareness to make the right decision, that he didn't agree with the time, but he looks back and says, yeah, she was absolutely right.
[1:00:04] What's it like to hear that or that must make you feel good?
[1:00:08] Yeah, that was very generous of him to do that.
[1:00:12] He is very generous.
[1:00:15] Yeah, it feels good, but it's also a bit like, well, couldn't you have made the call?
[1:00:19] Like, why did I have to be the bad guy?
[1:00:21] And, you know, people turn on you.
[1:00:23] People, you lose friends and people judge you.
[1:00:26] And it's a very, very painful time.
[1:00:28] Like, I wouldn't want to sort of put it out in the world that it's an easy thing to do, to break up a family.
[1:00:35] It's freaking horrible.
[1:00:37] And it's been eight, nine years now and it's got a lot better.
[1:00:42] But even though I think we did it the best way we possibly could and it was pretty harmonious, but you don't want to have to do it.
[1:00:54] That's for sure.
[1:00:56] You don't have to answer this question if it's going to a place that you don't want to talk about, but I am making a, I guess I don't know if it's a judgment, but an observation from seeing this incredible Australian story we were talking about before, that it seems like a divorce can be extremely toxic to a family and can really tear families apart.
[1:01:17] And the family that was presented in that show is one that is,
[1:01:20] has a lot of love and respect for everyone in it.
[1:01:23] I imagine that's a very challenging thing to keep at the centre of what you're during a divorce or to hold on to.
[1:01:32] Is there any way you can explain how you go about that process of keeping it a level of love and respect there that's appropriate?
[1:01:41] Does that make sense?
[1:01:42] Totally.
[1:01:42] You just have a mantra in your head that is play the long game, play the long game, play the long game, play the long game.
[1:01:50] That's what I just keep saying to myself, even if it was like nights of insomnia or tense anger or frustration.
[1:01:59] You just visualize that future place where you all want to be and don't indulge in what you're feeling right now.
[1:02:08] Yeah.
[1:02:09] And do you feel you've gotten to the long gap?
[1:02:11] Oh, yeah, and in spades.
[1:02:14] That's so good.
[1:02:14] Yeah, yeah.
[1:02:15] That is wonderful.
[1:02:16] Yeah.
[1:02:16] Yeah.
[1:02:17] That must be just the best feeling.
[1:02:19] It's a pretty good feel.
[1:02:21] Yeah.
[1:02:23] And, I mean, but also with full awareness that...
[1:02:28] Everything still may fall apart.
[1:02:29] You know, there's still plenty of pain coming to all of us.
[1:02:32] That's just a guarantee.
[1:02:34] I don't know if you're familiar with Bump, but I did, spoiler alert, we did this episode where my character dies and we went into that world with a death doll or death walker called Zenith Farago and...
[1:02:48] And what I am reminded of with that episode is that we don't know what's coming next and we don't know how long we're going to be here or how long our loved ones are going to be here.
[1:02:59] So, yeah, I'm happy now, but there's challenges around the corner for sure.
[1:03:06] Yeah.
[1:03:07] It's not over yet.
[1:03:08] Well, I understand you've been for a long time been imagining death and thinking about death as a helpful tool.
[1:03:16] It definitely is a helpful tool.
[1:03:19] Not in a sort of morbid, indulgent way.
[1:03:22] No, it's a helpful tool just because you feel, just sort of makes you enjoy your day more.
[1:03:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:03:27] Essentially what you're doing.
[1:03:29] I totally get it.
[1:03:29] I went and saw, do you guys know House of Dynamite, the film?
[1:03:33] I've heard about it.
[1:03:34] Yeah, I've got to see that.
[1:03:36] I've heard it's amazing.
[1:03:37] It's incredible.
[1:03:38] I saw it a couple of weeks ago and I told mum and mum's first reaction was, oh, why did you go and see that?
[1:03:43] Because I'm quite an emotional person and I enjoy that.
[1:03:46] But she, I think, wants to protect me from feeling sad.
[1:03:49] So she's like, why did you go and do that?
[1:03:50] But I came out of it just with this like, I so much love film.
[1:03:55] and gratitude for everything in my life.
[1:03:57] And I just wanted to go hug my kids and not lose it at them or just be the best possible dad.
[1:04:02] Really, this experience of imagining what it would be like for it all to be gone was the most liberating thing for – and I think I'm still on a bit of a high, weirdly, from it.
[1:04:12] That's wonderful.
[1:04:13] Yeah.
[1:04:14] Is that kind of what it's like for you, the idea of – Totally.
[1:04:16] Totally, yeah.
[1:04:17] It just allows you to get into the gratitude flow, I think is what it's called.
[1:04:21] Yeah.
[1:04:22] Without diminishing whatever you're going through in that day or minimizing things, it does just put it in perspective.
[1:04:28] Yeah, it's a beautiful blow.
[1:04:29] But I have to, you know, spoiler alert, if I am given a terminal diagnosis tomorrow...
[1:04:35] I will probably have a tantrum and behave unbally.
[1:04:38] Like, what the fuck?
[1:04:40] I'm not supposed to die.
[1:04:42] I'm supposed to live till I'm 90.
[1:04:44] What?
[1:04:44] I'll probably behave like a brat or a child.
[1:04:48] Yeah, yeah.
[1:04:48] Just a spoiler alert.
[1:04:49] Yeah.
[1:04:51] All of this, you know, I think I've been coaching myself into, you know, openness to these sorts of things.
[1:04:57] But I'm not saying that I won't behave like an absolute twat.
[1:05:01] How did you come across that as a thing to do?
[1:05:03] Like what inspired you to start thinking about your mortality?
[1:05:09] I don't know how I came across a book called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which is actually a really esoteric tome, which I definitely did not read, but I thought I read.
[1:05:19] Yeah.
[1:05:22] I've been stuck through it since and I don't remember any of this and I don't even understand it.
[1:05:26] But I got through enough of it to read the chapter or the passage on...
[1:05:33] Reflecting on your mortality every day.
[1:05:35] And I just remember sitting on the, I don't know where I was, on a park bench somewhere.
[1:05:38] I just remember putting it down and just visualising that and it just blowing my mind.
[1:05:45] And it just stayed with me from, yeah, from 21.
[1:05:49] And, yeah, not sitting there imagining people crying at your funeral and what music will you play and all this sort of stuff.
[1:05:55] It was about, okay, if it ended tomorrow,
[1:05:59] How do you feel?
[1:06:01] I have gone to even weirder places lately.
[1:06:03] Maybe you shouldn't even share it.
[1:06:05] Like what?
[1:06:07] I just didn't share it like what?
[1:06:09] Go on.
[1:06:10] No, it's like showing us a trailer that we can't see the film for.
[1:06:17] This might seem really weird, so I'm just going to go there.
[1:06:20] But when you're on an aeroplane and you hit the turbulence where I go, okay, plane's going down.
[1:06:27] Oh, you assume it is?
[1:06:29] Absolutely.
[1:06:30] I lean in.
[1:06:30] This is it.
[1:06:31] Whoa.
[1:06:32] Dying now.
[1:06:33] Just so I can like push it a bit.
[1:06:35] this is it happening and really to try and feel it try to sit in that place and go okay if this is it now what am i thinking how am i coping am i going to start screaming and crying or am i just going to breathe and go yeah i knew this was this was happening this was on the cards this is not a big surprise so i do that yeah and and what do you start screaming how do you watch your where do you go
[1:06:58] No, but, I mean, the plane doesn't go down.
[1:07:00] So, I mean, again, it's just a theory.
[1:07:03] Yeah, yeah.
[1:07:04] It's kind of practising.
[1:07:05] It's a game I'm playing where I'm practising and I probably will be terrible when the moment happens.
[1:07:11] I'm a weirdo.
[1:07:12] Wow, that's fascinating.
[1:07:14] So one of the things that's always really interested me is Josh and I have a history of sort of mental ill health through our family and just from this conversation, it sounds like you do as well.
[1:07:27] Do you know how far back that goes?
[1:07:30] You mentioned schizophrenia and bipolar.
[1:07:34] Interested to hear your story on that or your position with the mental health in your family?
[1:07:42] I did an episode of Who Do You Think You Are, which I assumed I would get a whole lot of stories that reflected my current families and my auntie and exits everywhere.
[1:07:57] It was unbelievable, the incredibly healthy, constructive, resilient ancestors that I have, which I found really comforting.
[1:08:10] Mm-hmm.
[1:08:11] And I don't know of any others other than my dad and my brother.
[1:08:17] What is your experience of schizophrenia?
[1:08:21] I know your brother, you're saying schizophrenic as well.
[1:08:25] How is it loving someone with their condition of schizophrenia?
[1:08:34] I work very hard to try not to imagine exactly what it would be like to be in Rupert's head.
[1:08:42] That is too painful.
[1:08:45] But also it is what he knows and that's what he's lived with and he is the best he's ever been now, which is extraordinary.
[1:08:53] So things have improved.
[1:08:56] So I just focus on that and improve to a place where I couldn't have thought it was imaginable.
[1:09:03] And then even with my father, there were long periods of time where he was wonderful and fantastic and we had really good quality, lovely, calm time together and then he would have another episode.
[1:09:18] So a lot of it is balancing medications and getting that access to medication and...
[1:09:29] But what I do find extraordinary about mental health and neurodiversity and that space is how do you extract the person from the illness?
[1:09:45] And even friends I know who are being diagnosed with ADHD sometimes later in life
[1:09:53] I see that if they take away the ADHD symptoms, it's like, well, who am I?
[1:10:00] Which bit is me?
[1:10:01] Yeah, that's so tough.
[1:10:03] Yeah.
[1:10:04] Yeah, that's a fascinating question to answer.
[1:10:06] Yeah, and it's then managing...
[1:10:10] the impact that has on people around you and best being declaring it, I guess, and being transparent about it and is the best thing.
[1:10:22] With my father though, he, even when he was perfectly sane,
[1:10:28] there was no space to discuss when he was completely insane.
[1:10:35] So there was no reconciliation, no declaring, no management, no acknowledgement of, oh, I'm sorry, what you had to go through.
[1:10:45] In fact, this is one of my favourite memories with my dad.
[1:10:48] He had this cup.
[1:10:50] I used to go in there and have cups of tea with him.
[1:10:52] His cup of tea said,
[1:10:56] Insanity is inherited.
[1:10:58] You get it from your children.
[1:11:01] Whoa.
[1:11:04] Which I truly believe he thought.
[1:11:07] Wow.
[1:11:07] I truly believe he thought I sent him insane.
[1:11:11] Wow.
[1:11:12] Jeez, that's a lot to take on.
[1:11:15] Well, I don't take it on.
[1:11:16] I didn't take it on.
[1:11:17] Okay.
[1:11:17] Okay, good.
[1:11:18] I mean, I may have like took it on a tiny bit.
[1:11:21] Yeah, but not the weight of it.
[1:11:22] Yeah.
[1:11:23] No.
[1:11:23] But it's a really interesting insight into his head.
[1:11:26] He couldn't reconcile or get any sort of perspective on...
[1:11:32] who or what he was and how he was behaving.
[1:11:34] No perspective, no insight.
[1:11:36] Yeah.
[1:11:39] So we've learnt a bit about your father today, a very complicated person who's no longer around.
[1:11:47] If you don't mind me asking, what was that like for you, for him to no longer be here?
[1:11:54] I was having lunch with a girlfriend when I got a call from the hospital saying that he had died.
[1:11:58] Yeah.
[1:12:00] I had a great, like, six years where I was his primary carer.
[1:12:05] While you were working as well?
[1:12:07] Yeah.
[1:12:07] Yeah, wow.
[1:12:08] Well, not full-time.
[1:12:10] The government have incredible at-home care packages and stuff.
[1:12:13] He was on a Level 4 aged care package, which was great, and he was very, very stubborn about staying at home, which is what he wanted, which I was really happy to be able to –
[1:12:23] make sure that that happened.
[1:12:25] Unfortunately, about two years before he died, he had another episode.
[1:12:30] So he believed that all the money that he was accumulating through the aged care package was his and he should be able to buy a car and that I was taking his money and it was all that same episodic stuff, terrible.
[1:12:42] That is so hard, I can't even imagine.
[1:12:44] It was awful.
[1:12:44] And he would get very, very angry, like white hot, livid anger and scream and stuff.
[1:12:50] So when that happened, I was like, I'm out.
[1:12:54] I can't do this.
[1:12:55] So the last two years were awful because he was in an institution and he was calling me and saying, you put me in here.
[1:13:04] It's your fault.
[1:13:05] You need to get me out.
[1:13:06] I did not put you into an institution.
[1:13:08] That was the acute mental health unit came to take him to have him in care.
[1:13:17] Um, so I didn't get to have any time with him in the last two years of his life.
[1:13:22] Um, and, but I was called to go and, um, identify his body because he had a heart attack at home.
[1:13:32] The carers were there.
[1:13:34] Um, then he was taken to the hospital, but for some reason, I don't know how this all works.
[1:13:39] The police were there.
[1:13:40] I was like,
[1:13:43] why is the police here?
[1:13:44] Is this a crime scene?
[1:13:46] They hadn't determined the cause of his death.
[1:13:49] And I was instantly like, do they think I've killed him?
[1:13:53] Oh.
[1:13:53] It was really weird.
[1:13:55] Do you assume that you're a... Well, any time, you know, when you see the police throughout behind you go, oh, no, I don't have my seatbelt on.
[1:14:00] Oh, no, I don't have my licence.
[1:14:02] You just instantly feel guilty.
[1:14:04] And the police thought, oh, this is weird.
[1:14:06] Anyway, it wasn't that weird.
[1:14:08] It's just procedural just for anyone who this happens to.
[1:14:11] It's just normal.
[1:14:12] And they were lovely police officers.
[1:14:14] And so I had to go into a room and identify his body.
[1:14:20] And so the body is covered.
[1:14:21] Have you ever had to do that?
[1:14:23] Oh, not identify, but have seen it.
[1:14:24] Just around grandparents and stuff, but not identify.
[1:14:27] So...
[1:14:30] There's a lovely person in the room who said, are you going to be all right and we're going to take the cover off and you'll see your father.
[1:14:37] And everything that everyone has told me about dead people is that they look incredibly beautiful.
[1:14:43] Have you heard that?
[1:14:43] No.
[1:14:44] Oh, you haven't?
[1:14:45] No, I haven't heard that.
[1:14:47] Oh, I've heard they look peaceful.
[1:14:48] Very peaceful, peaceful.
[1:14:50] Yeah, and younger and just beautiful to be around a dead body.
[1:14:56] They pulled the cover back.
[1:14:57] He still had the gadget in his mouth and I just thought he's going to open his eyes and just start screaming at me.
[1:15:02] Like I still saw him as very angry.
[1:15:05] Anyway, it was very sad and I, you know, cried a lot.
[1:15:10] But essentially it was great that he was at peace and, yeah, I can't believe he lived as long as he did with the way he was living.
[1:15:24] How old was he when he got?
[1:15:27] 81.
[1:15:27] Okay.
[1:15:28] Yeah.
[1:15:30] God, that must be so hard also to go from that beautiful relationship to those last two years and then, I don't know, to be left with –
[1:15:45] Where do I place this now?
[1:15:46] Where do I place these last two years?
[1:15:48] Yeah, I didn't have any struggle with that at all.
[1:15:51] I just feel so grateful to him for fighting for us.
[1:15:55] Like a lot of dads, if they're in situations like that, they just go.
[1:15:59] And lots of children just don't have, they have very absent fathers.
[1:16:04] Like he really fought to build a property and give us motorbikes and all this beautiful, you know, we used to go down river trips
[1:16:15] that beautiful connection to the bush and he really claimed us and I'm really grateful for that and that he was so interested in us and I understand he was hurt and I understand where that pain came from.
[1:16:28] I know I wasn't a part of that.
[1:16:30] I also am very grateful for those six years we had where...
[1:16:34] If I was having a bad day, I could just go down and sit in his flat and have a cup of tea, put his washing on and listen to classical music.
[1:16:43] And he was really at peace.
[1:16:45] He was really lovely.
[1:16:46] I really had a great six years with him.
[1:16:49] Last two years, hideous.
[1:16:51] The whole probate thing was hideous because when you...
[1:16:54] have a lot of mental health issues you write a lot of wills and it's a nightmare to unpick so that was that was the worst having because i was an executor but uh that was that sucked to see the will
[1:17:09] Oh, there's so many different wills.
[1:17:11] Oh, really?
[1:17:11] And they're all coming out and trying to explain it to, because the person who has to determine probate has to try and unpick and understand this amazing, complicated scenario with all these different.
[1:17:25] So it was the will, because he kept changing it or kept updating it?
[1:17:28] Yeah.
[1:17:29] So does the, sorry, this is getting in the weeds, but is it like the final will that they do is the one that is on it?
[1:17:36] Yeah.
[1:17:37] It's so complicated because, well, the wheels don't make any sense and then you sort of...
[1:17:46] But you then have to prove that they weren't of sound mind and it's, yeah, it's a, and I had, I had to do that by myself because my brothers can't help me.
[1:17:55] And so that was probably the hardest part of it all.
[1:17:59] So I really could probably let him go once that was all settled because that was, there was a lot of, yeah, historical pain and anger in those documents, which I, in the Australian story, I've.
[1:18:14] After he died, I was like, oh, my God, he lodged a will in 19...
[1:18:18] 86.
[1:18:19] Oh, this is going to be like a love letter from the grave.
[1:18:21] I'm going to get to see what he wrote.
[1:18:23] And he wrote all this horrible stuff about me and my brother.
[1:18:26] Oh, my gosh.
[1:18:27] When I was 16, I was like, oh, wow, I thought you really loved us then.
[1:18:31] Anyway, whatever.
[1:18:31] It's just his illness.
[1:18:32] It's fine.
[1:18:33] Yeah.
[1:18:34] I mean, that's a good time to separate the condition from the person.
[1:18:38] Totally.
[1:18:39] Totally.
[1:18:39] It was just a psychosis.
[1:18:40] And, yeah, so it was a lot.
[1:18:43] There's a lot to unpack.
[1:18:44] But...
[1:18:45] It was all really healthy and great and I feel like there's a lot of closure there and a lot of really beautiful memories and I feel very grateful for a lot of the good stuff.
[1:18:57] Yeah, how wonderful you got those years.
[1:18:59] Yeah, and I do understand that he inherited a whole lot of childhood traumatic stuff.
[1:19:07] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:19:08] That I, you know, couldn't have appreciated when I was young.
[1:19:11] Mm-hmm.
[1:19:12] If it's not too much of an intrusive question, when did you first sort of, or the family first noticed that Rupert had schizophrenia and what did that look like?
[1:19:25] I vividly remember like it was yesterday.
[1:19:28] I must have been about four years old, I reckon.
[1:19:33] And I don't think, I hadn't started school yet.
[1:19:36] But Rupert had started school and he came running into the living room in a state and going, I've got to find the golden money.
[1:19:43] I've got to find the golden money.
[1:19:45] And he was looking for the golden money under the couch.
[1:19:48] And the golden money wasn't a thing that existed at that point?
[1:19:51] It wasn't a – no, it's just – In my mind, even as a four-year-old, I was like –
[1:19:56] There's no golden money.
[1:19:57] Okay.
[1:19:57] And there's no one at school that has asked him to find the golden money.
[1:20:01] But literally nothing else.
[1:20:04] Just that one incident.
[1:20:07] And then very unusually he was diagnosed very late in life.
[1:20:11] Usually schizophrenia presents...
[1:20:14] through like when you're a teenager and often is set off by smoking marijuana.
[1:20:19] My brother never smoked marijuana, never did drugs.
[1:20:24] Maybe he was managing it as well as he could and then it just...
[1:20:29] I think as you go into adulthood and you have to try and hold down jobs and you watch all of your friends, you know, have relationships and children and I think he just all started, he just wasn't able to, I think it's called you fail to take off or there's a term for it.
[1:20:49] Launch.
[1:20:49] Launch.
[1:20:49] Yeah.
[1:20:50] So just failed to launch.
[1:20:52] Mm-hmm.
[1:20:53] And then around the age of 30, he was diagnosed.
[1:20:58] And by that stage, how was it affecting his life?
[1:21:03] Unfortunately, he went out with some friends when he was like in his early 20s and went gambling and won.
[1:21:10] And then he sort of became a gambler.
[1:21:14] So that was a real negative spiral.
[1:21:16] And not being able to manage friendships or loneliness, then not being able to hold down a job.
[1:21:25] And then it was voices.
[1:21:26] The voices started.
[1:21:27] He has two characters, the magician...
[1:21:32] David Copperfield is in his head and is always threatening to feed him to the fishes.
[1:21:38] And then he has another woman called Rebecca Swurfty-Wurfty.
[1:21:42] Wow.
[1:21:43] Good name.
[1:21:44] Amazing name.
[1:21:45] Yeah.
[1:21:47] And I am an ambassador for Wayside Chapel and that gave me the greatest insights into how to maintain my relationship with my brother because I went through lots of phases of, as we all do, trying to fix him, trying to fix him.
[1:22:02] So I'd see him coming towards me and he's just staring at the pavement.
[1:22:05] I go, hey, Rupert.
[1:22:07] try walking and looking up at the clouds.
[1:22:09] You might feel better.
[1:22:11] Shut up.
[1:22:13] Best intentions.
[1:22:14] Best intentions.
[1:22:14] Or, hey, Rupert, I've bought you a pass to go to yoga.
[1:22:17] Go to these yoga classes.
[1:22:18] They'll make you feel great.
[1:22:19] And he doesn't go and you go, I tried.
[1:22:21] I tried to help you.
[1:22:22] You didn't go to yoga classes.
[1:22:24] If you went to yoga classes, you wouldn't have schizophrenia.
[1:22:29] You know, you're just trying.
[1:22:30] That's so true.
[1:22:31] Then when I went to Wayside Chapel, their motto there is,
[1:22:36] The visitors are people to be met, not problems to be solved.
[1:22:40] And that just gave me this permission to go, okay, Rupert is not a problem and I'm not going to try and solve him.
[1:22:47] All I am going to do is meet him and be present.
[1:22:50] So that really helped our relationship enormously that I don't have expectations.
[1:22:56] I'll just go, I love you, give you a hug, hang out.
[1:22:59] You don't want me to be here?
[1:23:00] Okay, I'm gone.
[1:23:01] You want a visit?
[1:23:02] I'll come and visit.
[1:23:03] But it's actually so much easier that it feels like you're sort of cheating.
[1:23:09] The other stuff's so much harder.
[1:23:10] Yeah, especially if you've grown up your whole life thinking you've taken on a sort of responsibility that no one's given you, that you think you need to solve these problems or fix people or situations, to be told you actually take the day off.
[1:23:23] Yes.
[1:23:23] You need to just chill out.
[1:23:25] Yeah, you have to retrain your brain.
[1:23:26] Yeah.
[1:23:27] Yeah.
[1:23:27] You're saying that you didn't get to have a conversation with your dad around, there's no conversation around the condition.
[1:23:35] Do you get to have that conversation with Rupert?
[1:23:38] When he's going well, do you get to talk to him about the impact on you or how he's going?
[1:23:43] Yeah.
[1:23:44] No, no, no.
[1:23:45] He's more acute than that.
[1:23:47] Okay.
[1:23:47] No, and that would be just annoying, I think.
[1:23:50] I mean, I said to him once, oh, Rebecca Swervey, what does she look like?
[1:23:54] Because I imagine she looked like Jessica Rabbit from, you know.
[1:23:58] Roger Rabbit.
[1:23:59] Roger Rabbit.
[1:23:59] Rebecca Swervey looks like that to me.
[1:24:01] Yeah, wow.
[1:24:02] I was like, what does she?
[1:24:03] Lucky Rupert.
[1:24:04] Exactly.
[1:24:05] Exactly.
[1:24:05] I was hoping there'd be some perks for him.
[1:24:07] I was like, what does Rebecca Swifty look like?
[1:24:10] Does she wear high heels?
[1:24:11] No, no, no, no, flat shoes.
[1:24:13] I'm like, okay.
[1:24:14] Does she wear a dress?
[1:24:15] No, no, a suit.
[1:24:16] I'm like, oh, does she have long hair?
[1:24:17] No, no, she's got short hair.
[1:24:19] She's not real.
[1:24:21] Oh, okay.
[1:24:23] So I was like, okay, shut up.
[1:24:25] Stop asking questions.
[1:24:26] Yeah.
[1:24:27] Oh, that's so interesting.
[1:24:28] So can I ask about your time at the work you do with Wayside?
[1:24:33] Wayside Chapel, yeah.
[1:24:35] What is volunteering and helping others?
[1:24:39] What does that mean to you and what role does it play in your life?
[1:24:42] Wayside Chapel is in Kings Cross, so it was part of my childhood.
[1:24:46] It was a place that I used to go to.
[1:24:48] They gave sex education.
[1:24:50] I was a bridesmaid there when I was 10 years old.
[1:24:53] So I knew about this place.
[1:24:55] Yeah.
[1:24:56] And that's when I learnt about this incredible initiative where on Christmas Day, which is one of the saddest days for a lot of people and the highest suicide rate, I understand,
[1:25:09] They close off the whole street and Christmas Day is a party and everyone gets fed and singing and presents.
[1:25:16] And so initially I started volunteering Christmas Day or Boxing Day, the clean-up afterwards, or just go.
[1:25:25] That was one of the things we always did as a family was go there for Christmas Day for the 10 o'clock service and then go and have lunch.
[1:25:33] Um, so that's what it looks like.
[1:25:35] Or otherwise I, I can, I volunteered on the front desk, which is, um, you know, you, you're dressing people, getting clothes out of the, you know, getting underpants, bras, shampoo, so turning on the showers, that sort of stuff.
[1:25:49] It's a, it's a drop in place, a place where people can get cheap meals and it's just a place where you're not judged and you, if you're sleeping rough somewhere to hang out.
[1:25:58] Yeah.
[1:25:59] Well, we feel bloody delighted that you made a choice to be here today.
[1:26:02] It means so much.
[1:26:04] We've kind of for a long time have been saying, can you imagine if we got Cordia Carbon on it?
[1:26:08] It's happened.
[1:26:09] We can't believe it.
[1:26:09] You are so amazing.
[1:26:11] We love you.
[1:26:11] Thank you so much for joining us today.
[1:26:12] Oh, thanks for having me.
[1:26:13] Thanks, Claudia.
[1:26:14] I did listen to the Hannah Ferguson one and that was actually the tipping point for me.
[1:26:20] I was like, oh.
[1:26:21] If she can be that generous, I just feel like I have to reciprocate and join the conversation too.
[1:26:28] We've all got to join the conversation.
[1:26:30] Wow.
[1:26:31] Huge thank you to Hannah Ferguson.
[1:26:34] And your conversation with her, the way you talk to people.
[1:26:36] It's really a pleasure to be here.
[1:26:38] Thank you very much.
[1:26:39] Thank you.
[1:26:46] Thank you.
[1:26:47] Well, Hugh Jackman, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, please listen to the Hannah Ferguson ep and maybe you also want to come on to the Imperfects.
[1:26:57] Seems to be a pretty good way to get people to come on.
[1:27:01] Wow, what a woman.
[1:27:03] It was so nice just hanging out with her for a couple of hours.
[1:27:06] Yeah, I'd never met her before.
[1:27:08] It was just awesome.
[1:27:09] So what I'd love to talk about is something that I've chosen because for two reasons, I think it is probably my greatest challenge in life and I think it will be for so many other people as well.
[1:27:18] At age 42, Claudia Carvin said she waited too long, but she eventually saw a psychologist and in that session, a psychologist said to her, you need to stop trying to fix people.
[1:27:28] I mean, what came across to me, I don't know if you guys felt this as well, but
[1:27:33] in accepting that, accepting it wasn't her job to fix people around her, it didn't mean that she cared less.
[1:27:39] It just meant that she cared in a healthier way.
[1:27:42] And that was huge for me.
[1:27:44] Like there was a few minutes throughout the interview where I really had to – I was thinking, my gosh, this is just the energy that she has around talking about the people she loves and how she's not there to fix them.
[1:27:54] I need to really – I was inspired by it, but I need to really learn from this.
[1:27:58] I mean, it started for us at a young age in our life.
[1:28:01] We've talked about our sibling who struggled with an eating disorder, but I, a few years ago, became an ambassador for EDFA, which is Eating Disorders Families Australia, and I went and did a talk for them last year, and they're there to support family members of people with eating disorders.
[1:28:17] And I actually asked our mum and said, what's one thing you would say to people who are going through what we went through more than two decades ago?
[1:28:25] Mm-hmm.
[1:28:26] Mum said to me, I just wish I knew back then it wasn't my job to fix it.
[1:28:31] That has since become a challenge for me.
[1:28:33] As I spoke about this time last year, having a child on the spectrum, I don't want to fix them, but I do want to fix the world around them a lot of the time.
[1:28:42] I do find myself wanting to fix situations around them
[1:28:45] in order to really help them, which I know is a big part of my job as their parent, but it also, that is my big challenge.
[1:28:52] What can I fix and what can't I fix and what is healthy behaviour and what isn't?
[1:28:56] And my situation is obviously different to Claudia's and I think anyone parenting a child on the spectrum, everyone's situation is different.
[1:29:05] I was writing a lot of stuff over the holidays about this experience of parenting neurodivergent child.
[1:29:10] And I actually wrote something which was inspired by Claudia, the chat we had with her.
[1:29:17] It's sort of like trying to make it my mantra for this year.
[1:29:21] And I just want to read it out because I feel like it would be helpful to people who are trying to do the same thing.
[1:29:26] And I'll give you some examples of what that looks like for me.
[1:29:28] That actually literally happened last night.
[1:29:30] So what I wrote was, and this is my effort to remind myself I don't need to fix everything around them.
[1:29:38] I wrote, you can care deeply without intervening, love without rescuing, and stay connected without taking control.
[1:29:46] That's kind of my mantra for them.
[1:29:48] That's amazing.
[1:29:49] So you can care deeply without intervening, you can love without rescuing, and you can stay connected without taking control.
[1:29:54] So my aim is to care deeply and,
[1:29:57] to love and to stay connected as opposed to intervene, rescue and take control.
[1:30:01] I mean, I think that applies to any loved one who might be struggling in some way.
[1:30:07] Yeah.
[1:30:08] Yeah.
[1:30:09] Yeah, totally.
[1:30:09] And so the example I will give you, and I'm just, I've chosen the most recent one.
[1:30:13] There are so many I could choose where I've tried to apply this, but as our child, it's, I will do an update on this at some point throughout this year because they have come on in leaps and bounds and,
[1:30:23] With that confidence they're gaining, they're now stepping out into the world, which is wonderful to see.
[1:30:28] Also terrifying for us as parents to see them step out into the unknown.
[1:30:32] But they have decided they wanted to play cricket and join a cricket team, which was very exciting because they love their cricket, but also terrifying because it's entering a whole new world they don't really know about.
[1:30:43] And it means last night they went to cricket training for the first time.
[1:30:48] which was I felt as nervous as I did on their first day of school because cricket is basically you pretty much turn up and you fail.
[1:30:55] There's so much failure in cricket, it's ridiculous.
[1:30:58] And there's so much uncertainty, which is both things for, I won't say all kids on the spectrum, but for our kids, that's something that they really struggle with.
[1:31:08] And those three things I said, so I'll give examples of the three things I had to do last night.
[1:31:12] So the first one, you can care deeply without intervening.
[1:31:15] So the first thing that happens is one of the coaches comes and introduces ourselves and I said, okay, everyone go and bowl and there are no balls left for our child.
[1:31:24] And the coach said, you can wax with that person there.
[1:31:27] Wax means share.
[1:31:28] Wax means share.
[1:31:30] So the temptation was to run over and say, oh, excuse me, you need to share with the child because in my head I'm thinking, well, they won't have the confidence to say.
[1:31:37] What's wax?
[1:31:38] First of all, what is wax?
[1:31:39] I'm going to work it out.
[1:31:40] How do I then?
[1:31:40] Wax is a cricket term.
[1:31:41] Wax is a cricket term.
[1:31:42] I've never understood why, but wax is when you share cricket balls with someone in the nets.
[1:31:46] Coach said that our child had no idea it was to worry about it.
[1:31:50] I was about 20 metres away, but I heard it and I wanted to run over and intervene.
[1:31:54] and just fix everything so it was okay.
[1:31:56] And I was thinking, no, you're here.
[1:31:59] Like that's showing that you care deeper.
[1:32:00] You're here.
[1:32:01] You're within range for them to come and ask for help if they need it.
[1:32:03] Just don't intervene.
[1:32:05] The second one, Love Without Rescuing.
[1:32:09] They got hit, and Josh will know this feeling, they got hit on the inside thigh, about second ball they faced, got hit on the inside thigh.
[1:32:15] It is awful.
[1:32:16] It's not going to break your leg, but the pain is.
[1:32:19] A stinger.
[1:32:20] Is it like a corky?
[1:32:21] It's more of a slap on the inner thigh, I'd say.
[1:32:24] Followed by a corky feeling.
[1:32:25] Oh, yeah.
[1:32:26] It is awful.
[1:32:27] Okay.
[1:32:27] Okay.
[1:32:28] And my reaction was to run down and say, this is going to be okay.
[1:32:32] It hurts now.
[1:32:32] But if you can get back up and keep going, it'll be okay.
[1:32:36] Or do you want to have a rest?
[1:32:37] And then it was just, I was so nervous about how they went batting because that would decide, I think, how their experience was of cricket training.
[1:32:45] But I thought, no, no, love.
[1:32:47] I'm here.
[1:32:48] Again, I'm showing love.
[1:32:49] We'll talk about it in the car on the way home.
[1:32:50] But I don't need to rescue them right now.
[1:32:51] And sure enough, they managed to get through it.
[1:32:54] And we had a long conversation about the car on the way home, how much it hurts and how awful it is.
[1:32:58] The last one, there was a drill that took place.
[1:33:01] They said, now we're going to do this.
[1:33:02] And I could see they had no idea what was going on.
[1:33:05] I felt sick because I was thinking this is – for me, I would sort of – well, I'll go to the back of the line and I'll watch everyone else do it.
[1:33:11] But I could see the stress building with our child.
[1:33:15] But I thought, no, stay connected and don't take control.
[1:33:18] And stay connected was, to me, stand where they could see that I was watching and I had them just in case.
[1:33:24] So we were connected.
[1:33:25] They could see me, but I didn't take control of the situation because taking control for me was going over and explaining it and saying to the coach, can you explain again?
[1:33:32] So getting in the car last night, I was so proud of them, so proud of them for getting through it.
[1:33:39] It was really, really challenging.
[1:33:41] Was it because you're going against all your instincts?
[1:33:43] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:33:44] But it was not trying to fix.
[1:33:46] It was just caring in a healthier way.
[1:33:49] And they said they've learned when they do something really incredible like this that they could get a McFlurry.
[1:33:55] And we went to McDonald's, get a McFlurry, and I thought, you know what?
[1:33:58] I think I've earned one too.
[1:34:01] We're both sat at the radio and I'm like, Flora's going.
[1:34:03] Exhausted.
[1:34:03] I said to them, I am so proud of you.
[1:34:07] And in my head I went, and I'm so proud of you too.
[1:34:10] Because you are, that was not fixing, that was caring.
[1:34:15] Like I said at the top there with Claudia, it didn't mean that I cared less.
[1:34:20] It meant that I was caring in a healthier way and I think healthier for them as well.
[1:34:23] Nice.
[1:34:25] Yeah, so I'll read that again to everyone, just not the whole thing.
[1:34:28] Yeah.
[1:34:31] We'll just finish with reading the transcript from the episode.
[1:34:35] So just those are the words I'll leave you.
[1:34:37] So for anyone who is trying also to try not to fix someone but just care in a healthier way, you can care deeply without intervening, you can love without rescuing and you can stay connected without taking control.
[1:34:49] Absolutely.
[1:34:50] I felt at the moment she walked into the room that you can also thrive in life.
[1:34:56] Absolutely.
[1:34:57] Yes.
[1:34:58] Alongside that.
[1:35:00] Because for me, I think a lot of the time, I think a lot of people who listen to this show maybe or at least I have felt like this that you've got to fix all, as you said, you've got to fix all, not just fix other people, but fix all the things in your own life to have a good life, to be happy.
[1:35:16] But I loved this sort of the person in front of me seemed to be accepting of all of life as a complicated thing that you can still really thrive and have so much joy in your life.
[1:35:27] That's a great point.
[1:35:28] Yeah.
[1:35:29] And sometimes when you're around real artists, I feel like artists, really good artists are especially good at this and taking it all in and building an amazing life around it.
[1:35:38] And it was really inspiring to be in her presence.
[1:35:40] And I think what you've just described sums it up on an everyday level.
[1:35:44] But the outcome of that and the person I saw was one who was just full of life.
[1:35:50] And it was a joy to be around us.
[1:35:51] So true.
[1:35:51] Yeah.
[1:35:52] Thank you, Claudia.
[1:35:53] Thanks, Hugh.
[1:35:54] That's really, I mean, I find that so helpful as well.
[1:35:57] I'm going to get you to repeat that to me again later.
[1:35:59] And I should say actually that on exactly what you just talked about, Em is going to do an episode in a few weeks on radical acceptance, which is exactly this concept.
[1:36:09] And it's going to be an absolute cracker.
[1:36:11] No pressure, Em.
[1:36:12] Yeah.
[1:36:13] Well, thank you, Claudia.
[1:36:15] Thank you, Hugh.
[1:36:16] And very out of context, there is no easy segue for this, but we've put together a quiz of sorts that you can go into the show notes of this episode and basically you can find out which of me, Hugh or Josh or Dr. Em, which of the four of us you most connect to, like who are you most like, I guess.
[1:36:38] Have you done the quiz?
[1:36:39] Yeah.
[1:36:39] I have done it.
[1:36:40] Where'd you get it?
[1:36:41] Please tell me you got you.
[1:36:42] I got Ryan.
[1:36:43] Oh, good.
[1:36:43] Yeah.
[1:36:44] I'm so similar to Ryan from Rove, it turns out.
[1:36:48] Yeah.
[1:36:48] So weird.
[1:36:49] So, yeah.
[1:36:51] So, you can go and go to the link in the show notes.
[1:36:54] It's quite – it's serious, but it's also silly.
[1:36:57] It's fun.
[1:36:59] But, yeah, hopefully you enjoy that.
[1:37:01] And we'll be back next week.
[1:37:02] That's good.
[1:37:03] Ciao.
[1:37:03] Bye.
[1:37:06] If you enjoyed this episode and want a little more, you might enjoy our subscriber-only apps, available on Patreon and Apple Podcasts.
[1:37:13] If you want a little more but don't want to pay any more, then you can join our newsletter at theimperfects.com.au.
[1:37:18] And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who helped make this show.
[1:37:23] A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri, Wurundjeri people, and we pay our respects to elders past and present.
[1:37:29] The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.
[1:37:36] The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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